the work of art in the digital duniya

The reference  is to Walter Benjamin's classic essay   " The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Which  posited  the end of traditional ideas of art  and pushed the idea of  Art  that was based in politics.  My cuppa for quite some time. 

This Gallery of Lost Art  pushes the debate further,  though  not necessarily along the political paths Benjamin would have preferred. 


"The Gallery of Lost Art could only exist as a digital project, not just because the artworks are now missing and so could not be brought together in a physical space, but also because working in the digital space allowed us to choose artworks that, while they were extant, were sited in different parts of the world or could never be shown in any gallery,”

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/10/virtual-gallery-of-lost-art/

However, only in the 20th and 21st centuries has art actually courted its own destruction. The archive offers insights into the form this creative violence has taken. Rauschenberg's De Kooning erasure is a spectacular example. In 2011, an infra-red scan of this apparently blank sheet revealed the strong abstract marks of the lost work, proving Rauschenberg really did erase an authoritative piece of abstract expressionism. He said it took months to rub off every bit of colour. What is the meaning of such an assault? It says art can be made by removing as well as by adding, by destroying as well as by creating – that an ethereal gesture can be as real as something made by effort.

Many modern artists have made works that have not survived and were never intended to. The collection includes photographs of a striking cubist construction by Georges Braque that disintegrated long ago. When this papier-collé work was made, Braque and Picasso were working together in a daring way, conducting ephemeral experiments like two scientific researchers. It was inevitable that some of their cubist collages and assemblages would get lost, broken or destroyed; it was all part of the process.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jul/01/gallery-of-lost-art

And the site itself:  http://galleryoflostart.com/

                                     "ART" -  on the scent of the lost symbols in  Art


For those wanting to dig deeper into Benjamin's original essay, here is  a link.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm